A Solutions Story from Kodak

Ripley Entertainment Preserves Almost 100 Years of Valuable Memorabilia With the Kodak Picture Saver Scanning System Via E-Z Photo ScanSolution Features On-site Scanning by i/oTrak’s E-Z Photo Scan Division Using the Kodak PS810 Picture Saver Scanning System, Kodak Picture Saver Scanning System Software, and Kodak Capture Pro Desktop Software

For over 90 years, Ripley Entertainment Inc. has entertained visitors around the world, with over 80 exciting attractions in 11 countries, along with best-selling books, a network television series in more than 70 countries, and the longest continuously published newspaper comic in history. Many people know them from “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not” and their various museums around the world.

Today, Ripley’s is part of The Jim Pattison Group, headquartered in Vancouver, BC. The group is comprised of 450+ locations around the globe, focusing on the automotive, media, packaging, food sales/distribution, entertainment, export and finance industries. It’s the third largest private company in Canada (visit www.ripleys.com).

Customer

In 1918, Ripley’s founder Robert Ripley began drawing his daily feature comic. Today, Ripley Entertainment’s vault contains fragile paper copies of these comics going back to their start, along with old photographs that documented cartoonist and adventurer Robert Ripley’s personal history, and the sources and stories behind the cartoon panels.

In February 2010, Ripley Entertainment started looking at high-resolution flatbed scanning all of the valuable cartoons and supporting photos, using flatbeds for input into their MediaBin Digital Asset Management system. Unfortunately, flatbed scanning this huge volume of content was cost prohibitive due to the labor costs associated with the slow scanning speeds of flatbeds.

Ripley’s paused and waited for a smarter solution. In late 2010, i/oTrak’s E-Z Photo Scan Division, located in Altamonte Springs, FL, began using the Kodak PS810 Picture Saver Scanning System with their customers who wanted to quickly and safely achieve high-quality scans of large volumes of photographic prints and other documents and save them as digital files. E-Z Photo Scan focuses on helping people, communities and organizations preserve their photos (as they like to say): “here, there, or together!”

Challenge

Solution E-Z Photo Scan demonstrated the Kodak PS810 Picture Saver Scanning System to Ripley Entertainment in late 2010. Ripley’s was impressed with the careful way the Gentle Photo Separator Module and transport of the system handled fragile documents, the quality of the scanned images, and the scanning speeds of up to 65 pieces per minute (4˝ x 6˝ rated photo scan speed).

Because of the compact size of the Picture Saver Scanning System, E-Z Photo Scan was able to bring the system to Ripley’s and digitize documents on-site near the company’s locked archive vault. This created enhanced document security and process visibility for their valuable originals and master copies.

Soon, each day about one year’s worth of cartoons and supporting photos were being scanned at 600 dpi and saved as color and grayscale TIFF files, as well as lower-resolution JPEGs. Both Kodak Picture Saver Scanning Software and Kodak Capture Pro Desktop Software are used to achieve superior image quality, both automatically and manually. For example, the Picture Saver Scanning Software provides enhancements such as contrast adjustment, color correction, deskewing, auto cropping, image rotation and image sharpening.

To learn more:www.kodak.com/go/docimaging

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Kodak Canada, Inc. Toronto, Ontario M9R 0A1

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Specifications are subject to change without notice.

Printed in USA

The introduction and use of the Kodak PS810 Picture Saver Scanning System by E-Z Photo

Scan created some very positive results in terms of preserving history and cost/labor savings.

> Archiving of a great heritage Previous flatbed scanning attempts only dented the vast Ripley’s archive and the 72 dpi scans were not of exceptional quality. The 600 dpi TIFF files being captured of almost 100 years of Ripley’s history ensure that

outstanding-quality images will be preserved and protected for many generations to come.

> Practical use of images Today, Ripley’s staff of writers, artists and designers use the high-resolution scanned images to create new publications and museum displays. And now, fragile documents no longer need to be handled because the digital

images are of such exceptional quality for reproduction.

> Features that streamline scanning Representatives of Ripley’s and E-Z Photo Scan praise the Gentle Photo Separator, the ability to scan mixed batches of documents, photos and memorabilia without pre-sorting; the ease of opening the PS810 Scanner to clean it and quickly return to scanning; and the multiple output format choices as just some of the reasons why this has been

such a smooth process.

> Impressive productivity and savings Having initially attempted flatbed scanning, Ripley’s greatly appreciates the speed and throughput possible with this solution. In fact, E-Z Photo Scan believes the Kodak Picture Saver Scanning System has paid for itself in labor savings alone after less than one month of use on this project.

Results

E-Z Photo Scan’s typical customers don’t have the world’s largest rubber band ball, a Ferrari made of matchsticks, or a two-headed goat in the warehouse next to their document and photo archive. Their typical customers are everyday people who want to start digitizing, preserving, and sharing their family, community, or organization’s photos and precious documents. Many are looking to start a small business providing a valuable service to their friends and neighbors. They may be genealogists, archivists, librarians, photographers, collectors, professional organizers, scrapbookers, entrepreneurs, or just the people next door, but they all share a desire to help people preserve and share the past.

To learn more about E-Z Photo Scan and the services they offer, visit www.ezphotoscanning.com.

About E-Z Photo Scan